Human roots of collaboration
Have you ever wondered what it is about humans that makes us able to collaborate? We’ve evolved as a social species and collaboration, at its heart, is a social behaviour. So, are there specific things we do as social beings that make collaboration happen (or allow us to make collaboration happen)?
Listening – Understanding – Empathy
I do not ask the wounded person how he feels, I myself become the wounded person.
Walt Whitman
Nearly everyone I speak to on the topic of collaboration mentions that listening is a critical skill in making it happen. While I think listening is a necessary first step, the intent of listening is to understand. And then from understanding comes the tough step, the leap from understanding to empathy; the step that takes us from comprehending in an academic sense the state someone is in to connecting someone else’s state to how that state would feel like in ourselves.
An example: If we are not listening, we won’t hear the message in words, or implicit in words and behaviour, that someone is upset. When we are listening, we pick up on the words and cues that let us know someone is upset. If that person’s state (being upset) registers in our awareness enough for us to shift what we are doing or saying, then we have managed to leap the understanding hurdle. If we see the other person’s situation and how it is making them feel and know how that emotion feels from our own experience, then we’re empathizing. It is an emotion level of understanding that makes a strong connection between people.
I think that empathy is a fundamental component of collaboration, not because it creates a strong connection between people, but because it is a behaviour that allows for the overall emotional wellbeing of a group to be preserved and improved. If I am collaborating, I will try to avoid creating situations where someone is experiencing negative feelings, because I have an understanding of how those feeling affect me. The opposite is true as well. We will seek to create situations of positivity for everyone when looking through an empathic lens.
I don’t want to suggest that we should not pursue our interests in a collaboration because we know it will be upsetting, but it does significantly affect how we go about pursuing our interests. It actually drives us toward achieving our goals and the other persons goals.
Creativity
Creativity is intelligence having fun.
Albert Einstein
Our human ability to create new ideas from seemingly unconnected thoughts and concepts is a second human attribute that I think is crucial to our ability to collaborate.
Creative thinking comes in part from our ability to shift perspectives (hmmm, like empathy?) and see one thing, like a problem, from a number of different perspectives. For instance, we can look at traffic problems from the perspective of a driver, a traffic engineer, a police officer, a city official, and so on. And then, we can imagine our way through a particular viewpoint to as if we were playing it on a screen.
Of course, we can imagine our way through all kinds of scenarios, so there is also an element of action within creativity. There is a difference between creative and imaginary, after all. To take action on our creative idea, requires a level of courage; we need to be courageous enough to try the ‘new’ thing. In corporate cultures, there are often efforts to encourage creativity by not penalizing failures. We hear phrases like “fail forward” and “fail fast and early”, all intended to allow us to be more creative at work.
In a collaborative setting, creativity takes on a different flavour, because it draws the from collective imagination and experience of the group so that new ideas can emerge. As with empathy, creativity flows best when the collaboration is done well. The how matters here as well.
To recap, I’m thinking that our ability to empathize and to think creatively are two human talents that allow us to collaborate. If we took away either one, would we still be able to collaborate? It is also clear that the way in which we empathize and foster creative thinking matters.
I’m curious of your thoughts and whether you think there are any other human behaviours or attributes that are among the building blocks of collaboration. Let me know in the comments or at scott.millar@collaboration-dynamics.com.
Happy Collaborating.
Scott Millar, through Collaboration Dynamics, often works as a "peacemaker" by gathering people with different experiences and together. As the host of the Cool Collaborations values and helping them navigate beyond their differences to tackle complex problems podcast where he explores fun stories and insights of successful collaboration with guests from around the world, and then dives into what made them work. Cool Collaborations is currently available on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, and Spotify.
